Rhyme Judgment Research Articles

Effects of sound-to-spelling friends and enemies in children's auditory rhyme decisions

An experiment is reported, conducted on children of 9 and 11 years of age, that examined the possible effect of the relative number of sound-to-spelling friends and enemies the first word of a rhyming pair has on performance in the auditory rhyme judgment task. Friends are rhyming words with the same spelling of the rime (e.g., stream-dream and scheme-theme) and enemies are rhyming words with dissimilar spellings of the rimes (e.g., stream-theme and scheme-dream). It was predicted, following the Loosemore, Brown & Watson (1991) connectionist model of spelling, that the first word presented should activate the representations of its friends and inhibit the representations of its enemies and so the orthographic facilitation effect should be larger for those cases where the first word a rhyming pair has more friends than more enemies. The experiment reported in this paper found precisely the opposite pattern of results: the orthographic facilitation effect was only reliable for those cases when the first word had more enemies than friends. So it would appear to be the case that the degree of the activation of friends and the inhibition of enemies varies according to how many words are friends and how many words are enemies.
 
 Keywords: rhyme judgment task; friends and enemies; orthographic facilitation effect; children.

Arabic number writing in children with developmental dyslexia

Abstract Number transcoding is a basic numerical processing task that demands verbal skills during its execution. The goal of this study was to investigate number transcoding ability in children with developmental dyslexia. Twenty-three children with typical development and twenty-six children with developmental dyslexia participated in this study. Results showed that children with dyslexia show a deficit in phonological processing as well as in number transcoding. Repeated-measures analysis of covariance indicated that the dyslexia group presented performance below the average in the number transcoding. Regression analyses indicated that short-term verbal memory, phoneme deletion, rhyme judgment task and automatized naming was a strong predictor of number transcoding difficulties. Children with dyslexia present number transcoding deficits regardless of age and educational level.

A longitudinal neuroimaging dataset on multisensory lexical processing in school-aged children

Here we describe the open access dataset entitled “Longitudinal Brain Correlates of Multisensory Lexical Processing in Children” hosted on OpenNeuro.org. This dataset examines reading development through a longitudinal multimodal neuroimaging and behavioral approach, including diffusion-weighted and T1-weighted structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), task based functional MRI, and a battery of psycho-educational assessments and parental questionnaires. Neuroimaging, psycho-educational testing, and functional task behavioral data were collected from 188 typically developing children when they were approximately 10.5 years old (session T1). Seventy children returned approximately 2.5 years later (session T2), of which all completed longitudinal follow-ups of psycho-educational testing, and 49 completed neuroimaging and functional tasks. At session T1 participants completed auditory, visual, and audio-visual word and pseudo-word rhyming judgment tasks in the scanner. At session T2 participants completed visual word and pseudo-word rhyming judgement tasks in the scanner.

Children With Dyslexia and Familial Risk for Dyslexia Present Atypical Development of the Neuronal Phonological Network.

Learning to read changes the brain language system. Phonological processing is the language domain most crucial for reading, but it is still unknown how reading acquisition modifies the neural phonological network in children who either develop dyslexia or are at risk of dyslexia. For the two first years of formal education, we followed 90 beginning readers with (n = 55) and without (n = 35) familial risk of dyslexia who became typical readers (n = 70) or developed dyslexia (n = 20). We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural correlates of phonological awareness using an auditory rhyme judgment task. This task was applied when participants were starting formal education, and repeated 2 years later. By applying two alternative group splits, we analyzed the effects of dyslexia and the effects of familial risk of dyslexia separately. We found that the phonological brain network undergoes reorganization during the first 2 years of formal education. This process proceeds differently depending on the presence of a familial history of dyslexia and reading impairment. Typical readers without risk for dyslexia activate structures responsible for phonological processing already at the beginning of literacy. This group shows reduced brain activation over time during phonological processing, perhaps due to automatization of phonological skills. Children who develop reading impairment present a delay in the development of phonological structures such as the bilateral superior temporal gyri, left middle temporal gyrus, right insula and right frontal cortex, where we observed time and group interaction. Finally, typical readers with familial risk of dyslexia also present an atypical development of the neural phonological structures, visible both at the beginning of reading instruction and 2 years later. These children used a presumably efficient neural mechanism of phonological processing, based on the activation of the precentral and postcentral gyri, and achieved a typical level of phonological awareness.

Language Mapping in Aphasia.

Purpose Recovery from aphasia is thought to depend on neural plasticity, that is, functional reorganization of surviving brain regions such that they take on new or expanded roles in language processing. To make progress in characterizing the nature of this process, we need feasible, reliable, and valid methods for identifying language regions of the brain in individuals with aphasia. This article reviews 3 recent studies from our lab in which we have developed and validated several novel functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigms for language mapping in aphasia. Method In the 1st study, we investigated the reliability and validity of 4 language mapping paradigms in neurologically normal older adults. In the 2nd study, we developed a novel adaptive semantic matching paradigm and assessed its feasibility, reliability, and validity in individuals with and without aphasia. In the 3rd study, we developed and evaluated 2 additional adaptive paradigms-rhyme judgment and syllable counting-for mapping phonological encoding regions. Results We found that the adaptive semantic matching paradigm could be performed by most individuals with aphasia and yielded reliable and valid maps of core perisylvian language regions in each individual participant. The psychometric properties of this paradigm were superior to those of other commonly used paradigms such as narrative comprehension and picture naming. The adaptive rhyme judgment paradigm was capable of identifying fronto-parietal phonological encoding regions in individual participants. Conclusion Adaptive language mapping paradigms offer a promising approach for future research on the neural basis of recovery from aphasia. Presentation Video https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.10257584.

Children With Reading Difficulty Rely on Unimodal Neural Processing for Phonemic Awareness.

Phonological awareness skills in children with reading difficulty (RD) may reflect impaired automatic integration of orthographic and phonological representations. However, little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms involved in phonological awareness for children with RD. Eighteen children with RD, ages 9–13, participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study designed to assess the relationship of two constructs of phonological awareness, phoneme synthesis, and phoneme analysis, with crossmodal rhyme judgment. Participants completed a rhyme judgment task presented in two modality conditions; unimodal auditory only and crossmodal audiovisual. Measures of phonological awareness were correlated with unimodal, but not crossmodal, lexical processing. Moreover, these relationships were found only in unisensory brain regions, and not in multisensory brain areas. The results of this study suggest that children with RD rely on unimodal representations and unisensory brain areas, and provide insight into the role of phonemic awareness in mapping between auditory and visual modalities during literacy acquisition.

Temporo-frontal activation during phonological processing predicts gains in arithmetic facts in young children

Behavioral studies have shown discrepant results regarding the role of phonology in predicting math gains. The objective of this study was to use fMRI to study the role of activation during a rhyming judgment task in predicting behavioral gains on math fluency, multiplication, and subtraction skill. We focused within the left middle/superior temporal gyrus and left inferior frontal gyrus, brain areas associated with the storage of phonological representations and with their access, respectively. We ran multiple regression analyses to determine whether activation predicted gains in the three math measures, separately for younger (i.e. 10 years old) and older (i.e 12 years old) children. Results showed that activation in both temporal and frontal cortex only predicted gains in fluency and multiplication skill, and only for younger children. This study suggests that both temporal and frontal cortex activation during phonological processing are important in predicting gains in math tasks that involve the retrieval of facts that are stored as phonological codes in memory. Moreover, these results were specific to younger children, suggesting that phonology is most important in the early stages of math development. When the math task involved subtractions, which relies on quantity representations, phonological processes were not important in driving gains.

Morphological processing in Chinese engages left temporal regions

Morphological awareness, the ability to manipulate the smallest units of meaning, is critical for Chinese literacy. This is because Chinese characters typically reflect the morphemic, or morpho-syllabic units of language. Yet, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying Chinese speakers’ morphological processing remain understudied. Proficient readers (N = 14) completed morphological and phonological judgment tasks in Chinese, in both auditory and visual modalities, during fMRI imaging. Key to our inquiry were patterns of activation in left temporal regions, especially the superior temporal gyrus, which is critical for phonological processing and reading success. The findings revealed that morphological tasks elicited robust activation in superior and middle temporal regions commonly associated with automated phonological and lexico-semantic analyses. In contrast, the rhyme judgment task elicited greater activation in left frontal lobe regions, reflecting the analytical complexity of sound-to-print mapping in Chinese. The findings suggest that left temporal regions are sensitive to salient morpho-syllabic characteristics of a given language.

Effects of Orthographic Forms on the Acquisition of Novel Spoken Words in a Second Language

The orthographic forms of words (spellings) can affect word production in speakers of second languages. This study tested whether presenting orthographic forms during L2 word learning can lead speakers to learn non-nativelike phonological forms of L2 words, as reflected in production and metalinguistic awareness. ItalianL1 learners of English as a Second Language (EnglishL2) were exposed to EnglishL2 novel spoken words (pseudowords) and real words in association with pictures either from auditory input only (Phonology group), or from both auditory and orthographic input (Phonology & Orthography group, both groups n = 24). Pseudowords and words were designed to obtain 30 semi-minimal pairs, each consisting of a word and a pseudoword that contained the same target consonant, spelled with one letter or with double letters. In Italian double consonant letters represents a long consonant, whereas the English language does not contrast short and long consonants. After the learning phase, participants performed a production task (picture naming), a metalinguistic awareness task (rhyme judgment) and a spelling task. Results showed that the Phonology & Orthography group produced the same consonant as longer in double-letter than in single-letter lexical items, while this was not the case for the Phonology group. The former group also rejected spoken rhymes that contained the same consonant spelled with a single letter in one word and double letters in the other, because they considered these as two different phonological categories. Finally, the Phonology & Orthography group learned more novel words than the Phonology group, showing that orthographic input results in more word learning, in line with previous findings from native speakers.

Visual Rhyme Judgment in Adults With Mild-to-Severe Hearing Loss.

Adults with poorer peripheral hearing have slower phonological processing speed measured using visual rhyme tasks, and it has been suggested that this is due to fading of phonological representations stored in long-term memory. Representations of both vowels and consonants are likely to be important for determining whether or not two printed words rhyme. However, it is not known whether the relation between phonological processing speed and hearing loss is specific to the lower frequency ranges which characterize vowels or higher frequency ranges that characterize consonants. We tested the visual rhyme ability of 212 adults with hearing loss. As in previous studies, we found that rhyme judgments were slower and less accurate when there was a mismatch between phonological and orthographic information. A substantial portion of the variance in the speed of making correct rhyme judgment decisions was explained by lexical access speed. Reading span, a measure of working memory, explained further variance in match but not mismatch conditions, but no additional variance was explained by auditory variables. This pattern of findings suggests possible reliance on a lexico-semantic word-matching strategy for solving the rhyme judgment task. Future work should investigate the relation between adoption of a lexico-semantic strategy during phonological processing tasks and hearing aid outcome.

Auditory rhyme processing in expert freestyle rap lyricists and novices: An ERP study

Music and language processing share and sometimes compete for brain resources. An extreme case of such shared processing occurs in improvised rap music, in which performers, or ‘lyricists’, combine rhyming, rhythmic, and semantic structures of language with musical rhythm, harmony, and phrasing to create integrally meaningful musical expressions. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate how auditory rhyme sequence processing differed between expert lyricists and non-lyricists. Participants listened to rhythmically presented pseudo-word triplets each of which terminated in a full-rhyme (e.g., STEEK, PREEK; FLEEK), half-rhyme (e.g., STEEK, PREEK; FREET), or non-rhyme (e.g., STEEK, PREEK; YAME), then judged each sequence in its aesthetic (Do you ‘like’ the rhyme?) or technical (Is the rhyme ‘perfect’?) aspect. Phonological N450 showed rhyming effects between conditions (i.e., non vs. full; half vs. full; non vs. half) similarly across groups in parietal electrodes. However, concurrent activity in frontocentral electrodes showed left-laterality in non-lyricists, but not lyricists. Furthermore, non-lyricists’ responses to the three conditions were distinct in morphology and amplitude at left-hemisphere electrodes with no condition difference at right-hemisphere electrodes, while lyricists' responses to half-rhymes they deemed unsatisfactory were similar to full-rhyme at left-hemisphere electrodes, and similar to non-rhyme at right-hemisphere electrodes. The CNV response observed while waiting for the second and third pseudo-word in the sequence was more enhanced to aesthetic rhyme judgments tasks than to technical rhyme judgment tasks in non-lyricists, suggesting their investment of greater effort for aesthetic rhyme judgments. No task effects were observed in lyricists, suggesting that aesthetic and technical rhyme judgments may engage the same processes for experts. Overall, our findings suggest that extensive practice of improvised lyricism may uniquely encourage the neuroplasticity of integrated linguistic and musical feature processing in the brain.

Brain lateralization of phonological awareness varies by maternal education.

Socioeconomic status (SES) has been shown to influence language skills, with children of lower SES backgrounds performing worse on language assessments compared to their higher SES peers. While there is abundant behavioral research on the effects of SES, whether there are differences in the neural mechanisms used to support language skill is less established. In this study, we examined the relation between maternal education (ME), a component of SES, and neural mechanisms of language. We focused on Kindergarten children, at the beginning of formal reading education, and on a pre-reading skill, phonological awareness-the ability to distinguish or manipulate the sounds of language. We determined ME-related differences in neural activity by examining a skill-matched sample of typically achieving 5-year-old children as they performed a rhyme judgment task. We examined brain lateralization in two language processing regions, the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and superior temporal gyrus (STG). In the IFG, lateralization was related to ME but not skill: children with low ME showed bilateral activation compared to children with higher ME who showed leftward lateralization. In the STG, there was a skill by ME interaction on lateralization, such that children with high ME showed a positive relation between rightward lateralization and skill and children with low ME showed a positive relation between leftward lateralization and skill. Thus, we demonstrated ME is related to differences in neural recruitment during language processing, yet this difference in recruitment is not indicative of a deficit in linguistic processing in Kindergarten children.

A longitudinal neuroimaging dataset on arithmetic processing in school children

We describe functional and structural data acquired using a 3T scanner in a sample of 132 typically developing children, who were scanned when they were approximately 11 years old (i.e. Time 1). Sixty-three of them were scanned again approximately 2 years later (i.e. Time 2). Children performed four tasks inside the scanner: two arithmetic tasks and two localizer tasks. The arithmetic tasks were a single-digit multiplication and a single-digit subtraction task. The localizer tasks, a written rhyming judgment task and a numerosity judgment task, were used to independently identify verbal and quantity brain areas, respectively. Additionally, we provide data on behavioral performance on the tasks inside the scanner, participants’ scores on standardized tests, including reading and math skill, and a developmental history questionnaire completed by parents. This dataset could be useful to answer questions regarding the neural bases of the development of math in children and its relation to individual differences in skill. The data, entitled “Brain Correlates of Math Development”, are freely available from OpenNeuro (https://openneuro.org).

Towards a standardized annotation of rhyme judgments in Chinese historical phonology (and beyond)

Although rhyme analysis plays a crucial role in the reconstruction of Old Chinese phonology, the field has not yet developed a standardized annotation framework for rhyme judgments applied to Ancient Chinese texts. Building on initial attempts to standardize crosslinguistic data for the purpose of historical and typological language comparison (as part of the Cross-Linguistic Data Formats initiative), we present a proposal for consistent and transparent rhyme annotation. This proposal allows scholars to annotate the rhymes they identify in historical texts in such a way that the judgments can be analyzed with computational tools as well as conveniently inspected by scholars. Our framework is accompanied by software tools and exemplary datasets, which were annotated by various scholars, and reflect not only Chinese, but also contemporary poetry in different languages. In the paper, we present the framework and also point to caveats and current insufficiencies in annotation. In doing so, we hope to inspire more scholars working on Old Chinese reconstruction to share their judgments, allowing others working in the field to improve, revise, and analyze them.

Adaptive paradigms for mapping phonological regions in individual participants

Phonological encoding depends on left-lateralized regions in the supramarginal gyrus and the ventral precentral gyrus. Localization of these phonological regions in individual participants—including individuals with language impairments—is important in several research and clinical contexts. To localize these regions, we developed two paradigms that load on phonological encoding: a rhyme judgment task and a syllable counting task. Both paradigms relied on an adaptive staircase design to ensure that each individual performed each task at a similarly challenging level. The goal of this study was to assess the validity and reliability of the two paradigms, in terms of their ability to consistently produce left-lateralized activations of the supramarginal gyrus and ventral precentral gyrus in neurologically normal individuals with presumptively normal language localization. Sixteen participants were scanned with fMRI as they performed the rhyme judgment paradigm, the syllable counting paradigm, and an adaptive semantic paradigm that we have described previously. We found that the rhyme and syllable paradigms both yielded left-lateralized supramarginal and ventral precentral activations in the majority of participants. The rhyme paradigm produced more lateralized and more reliable activations, and so should be favored in future applications. In contrast, the semantic paradigm did not reveal supramarginal or precentral activations in most participants, suggesting that the recruitment of these regions is indeed driven by phonological encoding, not language processing in general. In sum, the adaptive rhyme judgment paradigm was effective in localizing left-lateralized phonological encoding regions in individual participants, and, in conjunction with the adaptive semantic paradigm, can be used to map individual language networks.

Dyslexia on a continuum: A complex network approach.

We investigated the efficacy of graph-theoretic metrics of task-related functional brain connectivity in predicting reading difficulty and explored the hypothesis that task conditions emphasizing audiovisual integration would be especially diagnostic of reading difficulty. An fMRI study was conducted in which 24 children (8 to 14 years old) who were previously diagnosed with dyslexia completed a rhyming judgment task under three presentation modality conditions. Regression analyses found that characteristic connectivity metrics of the reading network showed a presentation modality dependent relationship with reading difficulty: Children with more segregated reading networks and those that used fewer of the available connections were those with the least severe reading difficulty. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that a lack of coordinated processing between the neural regions involved in phonological and orthographic processing contributes towards reading difficulty.

Longitudinal Task-Related Functional Connectivity Changes Predict Reading Development.

Longitudinal studies suggest developmentally dependent changes in lexical processing during reading development, implying a change in inter-regional functional connectivity over this period. The current study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore developmental changes in functional connectivity across multiple runs of a rhyming judgment task in young readers (8–14 years) over an average 2.5-year span. Changes in functional segregation are correlated with and predict changes in the skill with which typically developing children learn to apply the alphabetic principle, as measured by pseudoword decoding. This indicates a developmental shift in the proportion of specialized functional clusters is associated with changes in reading skill and suggests a dependency of reading development on changes of particular neural pathways, specifically decreases in transitivity is indicative of greater network integration. This work provides evidence that characteristics of these pathways, quantified using graph-theoretic metrics, can be used to predict individual differences in reading development.

Structural and functional abnormality of the putamen in children with developmental dyslexia

There is currently debate with regards to the role of phonological deficit in Chinese reading difficulty, even though some researchers have suggested that the deficit of phonological processing is also a signature of developmental dyslexia in Chinese, as has been found in alphabetic languages. In this study, we examined the brain mechanisms of phonological deficit in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia (DD) during an auditory rhyming judgment task. First, we examined structural differences in Chinese dyslexia by comparing gray and white matter volume in Chinese children with DD, age-matched controls (AC), and reading-matched controls (RC). Next, we examined whether the regions with an abnormal volume in DD showed deficient functional connectivity with the rest of the brain during a phonological task (i.e. auditory rhyming judgment). We found that both AC and RC had greater gray matter volume (GMV) at the left putamen and right dorsal lateral frontal cortex than DD, suggesting possible neural signatures of developmental dyslexia. Functional connectivity analysis revealed that the left putamen was more connected with the right inferior occipital gyrus (IOG) in AC and RC than in DD, suggesting that automatic orthographic involvement during spoken language processing is more salient in controls, while the left putamen was more connected with the left transverse temporal gyrus (TTG) and left insula in DD than in AC and RC, suggesting the phonological articulation –auditory feedback loop is more involved in DD. These findings suggest that the reduced left putamen might contribute to phonological deficits experienced in DD, since it showed deficient connectivity with the rest of the brain during phonological processing.

A Test Battery for Inner Speech Functions.

Inner speech, or the ability to talk to yourself in your head, is one of the most ubiquitous phenomena of everyday experience. Recent years have seen growing interest in the role and function of inner speech in various typical and cognitively impaired populations. Although people vary in their ability to produce inner speech, there is currently no test battery which can be used to evaluate people's inner speech ability. Here we developed a test battery which can be used to evaluate individual differences in the ability to access the auditory word form internally. We developed and standardized five tests: rhyme judgment of pictures and written words, homophone judgment of written words and non-words, and judgment of lexical stress of written words. The tasks were administered to adult healthy native British English speakers (age range 20-72, n = 28-97, varies between tests). In all tests, some items were excluded based on low success rates among participants, or documented regional variability in accent. Level of education, but not age, correlated with task performance for some of the tasks, and there were no gender difference in performance. A process of standardization resulted in a battery of tests which can be used to assess natural variability of inner speech abilities among English speaking adults.

Speech recovery and language plasticity can be facilitated by Sensori-Motor Fusion training in chronic non-fluent aphasia. A case report study

ABSTRACTThe rehabilitation of speech disorders benefits from providing visual information which may improve speech motor plans in patients. We tested the proof of concept of a rehabilitation method (Sensori-Motor Fusion, SMF; Ultraspeech player) in one post-stroke patient presenting chronic non-fluent aphasia. SMF allows visualisation by the patient of target tongue and lips movements using high-speed ultrasound and video imaging. This can improve the patient’s awareness of his/her own lingual and labial movements, which can, in turn, improve the representation of articulatory movements and increase the ability to coordinate and combine articulatory gestures. The auditory and oro-sensory feedback received by the patient as a result of his/her own pronunciation can be integrated with the target articulatory movements they watch. Thus, this method is founded on sensorimotor integration during speech. The SMF effect on this patient was assessed through qualitative comparison of language scores and quantitative analysis of acoustic parameters measured in a speech production task, before and after rehabilitation. We also investigated cerebral patterns of language reorganisation for rhyme detection and syllable repetition, to evaluate the influence of SMF on phonological-phonetic processes. Our results showed that SMF had a beneficial effect on this patient who qualitatively improved in naming, reading, word repetition and rhyme judgment tasks. Quantitative measurements of acoustic parameters indicate that the patient’s production of vowels and syllables also improved. Compared with pre-SMF, the fMRI data in the post-SMF session revealed the activation of cerebral regions related to articulatory, auditory and somatosensory processes, which were expected to be recruited by SMF. We discuss neurocognitive and linguistic mechanisms which may explain speech improvement after SMF, as well as the advantages of using this speech rehabilitation method.